a bleeding purple utah jazz blog

The Advantages of a Flip Phone** KM: I got my flip phone. You know the neat thing about this flip phone here?…This phone can do something that you guy’s smart phones can’t. It drops service all the time. People can’t find me…My flip phone is nice. I don’t care what you guys say. You can’t drop your phone like I can.

Charles Barkley Joins the Show** CB: How long have I known Karl Malone? We were roommates at the World University Games in 1982 in Canada. I got some pictures. He weighed about 210 lbs…That’s how long I’ve known Karl. And the truth is, we both mama’s boys, so we hit it off. We both from the south, and we just been friends since then. But it goes back to 1982 to the World University Games, when we got robbed by Canada.

KM: No, no, we got cheated by Canada. Robbed. Bamboozled.

CB: I told people, every time I see Jay Triano, we played them in an exhibition game and beat them by 40 in one part of Canada. We go to the World University Games. Me, Karl Malone, Johnny Dawkins, Kevin Willis, and I think Jay Humphries were the starters. We fouled out in the first half. We were robbed. Canada still got my gold medal to this day.

** CB: When they started drafting those high school players, that’s when the NBA started going a little bit downhill to me, because these high school players, they don’t want to be coached. Anytime you coach them, they take it as criticism. Karl went through some of the stuff in Utah recently with these younger guys. If you don’t like Jerry Sloan, there’s something wrong with you. But there have become this shift in the NBA where the inmates are running the asylum, and that’s when we started drafting those high school players, and I don’t know if we gon ever get that back, where you can coach these kids, because now, the inmates are running the asylum.

** CB on Jerry Sloan: I look at [Jerry Sloan], I look at George Karl, guys like that, you’re like, I would’ve liked to have played for him. I will tell you, I get a call one day, and they’re like, Jerry Sloan’s looking for you. I’m like, give him my cell! ‘Cause you know, that’s like one of the Ten Commandments. You don’t give anybody’s cell out… but because it’s Jerry Sloan, he Jerry Sloan. He can get my phone number. And when Jerry called, he’s like, “Would you introduce me in[to] the Hall of Fame?” One of the greatest honors of my life, because when somebody ask you that, that’s respect. You know, I got the call…I got off the phone, I had tears in my eyes because for somebody to ask you to welcome them into the Hall of Fame, it’s a pretty special thing…It is one of the most humbling things that can ever happen to somebody, and when Coach Sloan asked me to do that, it meant a great deal to me.

** CB on weight lifting: Karl Malone was ahead of the curve when it came to weight lifting and making yourself have a fantastic body. Ath-uh-letes today are bigger and stronger. When I got to the NBA and Karl got to the NBA, no team had a strength and conditioning coach, because it was like, basketball players don’t lift weights. Karl was probably the first guy that made his body amazing, because he lifted weights.

** CB to Karl on [former Miss Idaho] Kay Malone: I can’t believe I never been to Idaho, but you got the prettiest one there.

** CB: My daughter…took a job in New York, and she says to me, “Dad, I don’t think I can afford to live in New York.” I said, “Really?” I told her, “I want you to go back to college. It was a lot cheaper on me when you didn’t have a job.”

Larry H. Miller and his beloved Cobras** KM: Larry used to start his Cobra, and I would get a call from him two or three minutes later saying, “I’m coming to pick you up. Be ready.” Here I am in shorts and everything. I remember, the funniest thing he ever did to me, he put a $100 bill on the dashboard–got a piece of tape, taped it on the dashboard–he said, “In a little while when I get on this stretch of highway, if you reach up there and get that 100 bucks, it’s yours.” I never got it…you could not raise up. I’m not lying…and I wanted that $100 the worst way.